The Kansas City Mavericks took a 2-0 series lead over the Florida Everblades in the 2026 Kelly Cup Finals with a 5-2 win on Saturday night at Cable Dahmer Arena in Independence.<\/p>\n
The Mavericks won Game 1 of the ECHL\u2019s best-of-seven championship series on Friday night, shutting out Florida 6-0 at Cable Dahmer Arena.<\/p>\n
It was more of the same Saturday in Game 2. Five Mavericks goals staked the home team to a 5-1 lead before the Everblades could muster their second one. That response came early in the final period, the outcome by then all but certain.<\/p>\n
KC got goals from Bobo Carpenter, Jake McLaughlin, Marcus Crawford, David Cotton and Jackson Jutting. Along the way, Florida\u2019s Carson Gicewicz scored a late-first-period goal that tied the game ever-so-briefly at 1-1.<\/p>\n
Four of the Mavericks\u2019 five goals Saturday came in a sizzling second-period outburst \u2014 a trend repeated from the night before.<\/p>\n
These teams are no strangers to one another. They played for the ECHL championship in the 2024 Kelly Cup finals, with Florida winning that series, and title, 4-1.<\/p>\n
With the KC franchise still seeking its first Kelly Cup championship, this year\u2019s Mavericks advanced to the finals with a 4-2 series victory over the Fort Wayne Komets in the Western Conference Finals. The Everblades beat the Wheeling Nailers 4-1 in the Eastern Conference Finals.<\/p>\n
The 2026 Kelly Cup Finals will now take a break for a few days before resuming midweek in Estero, Florida. The Everblades play host to the Mavericks in Game 3 Wednesday at Hertz Arena, with a puck-drop of 6:30 p.m.<\/p>\n
Games 4 and, if necessary, 5 would also be at Hertz Arena \u2014 with Game 4 guaranteed on Friday and a potential fifth game slated there Saturday. Games 6 and 7, if needed, would be back at Cable Dahmer Arena.<\/p>\n
Whether six or seven games will be required in this series is debatable. As was the case in Game 2, the Game 1 stat sheet heavily favored KC, especially in the second period \u2014 when the hosts scored four of their goals, just as they did Saturday.<\/p>\n
After KC\u2019s Jakov Novak and Hudson Wilson scored in Friday\u2019s opening stanza, the floodgates opened. The Mavericks got successive second-period goal goals from Jack Randl, Luke Loheit, Landon McCallum and Jimmy Glynn.<\/p>\n
Mavericks goalie Jack LaFontaine collected 15 saves in Friday night\u2019s shutout.<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s a look at the remaining Kelly Cup Finals schedule:<\/p>\n
ECHL 2026 Kelly Cup Finals schedule<\/p>\n
Games shown in Central Time<\/p>\n
Game 1: Mavericks 6, Everblades 0<\/p>\n
Game 2: Saturday, June 6<\/p>\n
Game 3: Wednesday, June 10 at 6:30 p.m. in Estero, Florida<\/p>\n
Game 4: Friday, June 12 at 6:30 p.m. in Estero, Florida<\/p>\n
Game 5: Saturday, June 13 at 6 p.m. in Estero, Florida*<\/p>\n
Game 6: Monday, June 15 at 7:05 p.m. at Cable Dahmer Arena*<\/p>\n
Game 7: Wednesday, June 17 at 7:05 p.m. at Cable Dahmer Arena*<\/p>\n
* \u2013 if necessary<\/p>\n
This story was originally published June 6, 2026 at 9:07 PM.<\/p>\n
Related Stories from Kansas City Star<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Kansas City Mavericks took a 2-0 series lead over the Florida Everblades in the 2026 Kelly Cup…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":298933,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[28,30,29],"class_list":["post-298932","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-florida","tag-florida","tag-florida-headlines","tag-florida-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298932","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=298932"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298932\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/298933"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=298932"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=298932"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=298932"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}